Page 10 of Impawssible Magic

But I do. I always have.

It’s the only way I know.

The mist thickens as I walk through Ironwood Row, tendrils curling around my boots with every step. The streets are quiet—most shifters are home by now, or gathered in the main room of The Den for drinking and stories. I could join them. Should, probably.

Instead, my feet carry me west. Toward The Hollow. Toward Moonthread Square.

The Den’s noise fades behind me as I cross Warden’s Crossing, the bridge’s old stones solid under my feet. Ahead, The Hollow opens up—narrow streets, buildings leaning into each other, the heavy presence of accumulated magic pressing against my senses.

Witches founded this place. Built it from nothing, layer upon layer of wards and spells and protective enchantments. Shifters came later, hired as protection, and stayed because Mistvale became home.

But The Hollow still belongs to the witches. Their magic saturates every brick, every cobblestone, every curl of mist that drifts through the winding streets.

I watch.

She sets down the charm and stretches, rolling her shoulders, working out kinks from hunching over her workbench. The movement is unconscious, unguarded—the kind of thing you do when you think no one’s watching.

My grip tightens on the bakery’s doorframe.

She moves to the window, pressing close to the glass. For a moment, it seems like she sees me. My body goes still, predator instincts freezing every muscle, making me invisible in the shadows.

But she’s not looking at me. She’s looking at the mist, expression shifting to wariness.

She steps back from the window. Her wards pulse. A deliberate check—she’s scanning for threats. Looking for whatever put that fear in her eyes.

She moves toward the back of the shop, and I lose sight of her. The fairy lights dim. A moment later, a second-floor window glows to life—her apartment, probably. Small, if the building’s proportions are any indication.

The protective instinct hits so hard my knuckles crack.

I force my hands to unclench. Take a breath that does nothing.

But as I stare at that second-floor window, watching the shadow of movement behind thin curtains, I feel—Recognition. Want.

The memory hits without warning.

I wrench myself back to the present, gasping, my hand pressed against the bakery’s wall to keep myself upright.

Five years of nothing. Five years of control, of duty, of being exactly what my pride needed me to be.

And now this witch—this stranger with her fiery hair and her fragile wards and her haunted expression—is making those walls shake.

I push off from the wall. Force my feet to move. One step, then another, putting distance between myself and the too-bright windows, the too-compelling witch.

The mist parts around me as I walk, tendrils reaching but never quite touching. It knows what I am. Knows that the predator walking through its depths is more dangerous than anything lurking beyond the Warding Line.

I’m almost to Market Bridge when I hear it.

A bell. Clear and bright, cutting through the mist-dampened silence.

The Familiar Registry.

I stop.

That bell. It only rings when a new match is recognized by the Registry’s magic—when two beings it has been watching finally acknowledge what they are to each other. Not engagement. Not courtship. The moment of recognition itself. The magic seeing itself reflected back.

The sound echoes across the rooftops, rolling through The Hollow like a proclamation. Once. Twice. Three times.

Then silence.